What word would God use to describe you?

Homily

2nd Sunday of Lent BI

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

28 February 2021

AMDG +mj

What's the word God would use to describe you?

Like it or not, the right answer is BELOVED.  The Father speaks once, and only once in the Gospels.  He uses one adjective.  You guessed it.  It's beloved.  St. Paul takes it a step further.  God loves you so much He gave away His only beloved.  So what does that make you?  At a minimum, you're just as beloved as Jesus.  That's the right answer.  God describes you as BELOVED. 

Yet none of us believes it, not in our bones anyway.  I sure don't.  What do I know instead?  I know the worst about myself.  It's the thing I can trust and can control more than God's love.  It's what I deserve.

I deserve to be described as CLUTTERED!

My life is messy, not clean.  I hoard.  I hang on.  I obsess over what I don't have, and what I can add to m y life.  I hate pruning and love pleasure.  I add and add and add and add.  I add to my workload, my schedule, my things.  I'm hang on to memories, resentments, relationships, and things I don't need.  I'm afraid to throw away pretty much everything.  Ask Fr. Dan my roommate.  He can tell you the story of the cheese sauce that I hung onto for 4 months!

What word would God use to describe you?  I bet the first word you thought of was not BELOVED but something you hate about yourself.  

It's time to let it go, and not cling to what you deserve, but only to God's love.

That's it.  We are invited to cling to one thing in life, and one thing only.  It's God's love.  Take Abraham as the standard.  He received Isaac when his wife was 90 years old, as a miraculous sign promising fruitfulness through faithfulness.  Then God asked for Isaac back.  It makes no sense.

Yet when I cling to anything less than God alone, my life gets smaller.  It's only when in faith I realize I only have the things that I'm willing to let go of, that my life grows.  Think about your life.  Think about that thing you most wanted to hold on to, that relationship you least understood why you had to give it up.  I bet it led to your life mysteriously getting bigger, and to greater fruitfulness.

When I cling to anything less than God, I am not free to live the law of grace.  When I am not free, I cannot rise to the likeness of God, nor can I be transfigured or transformed by grace which is not cluttered, but clean and free.

This of course is the point of Lent.  It's an invitation to let go of anything, and I mean anything, that distracts me from the ultimate reality and truth that I am God's beloved.  For Lent I need to let go of the word I cling to, the one I think I deserve, to receive the greater word that God uses to describe me.

So what will it be?  What word does God use to describe you?

what do I need to face?

Homily

1st Sunday of Lent BI

21 February 2021

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +jmj

What do I need to face?

Lent if it's worth doing is a time of brutal honesty.  Lent is a gift to draw us away from pretense and avoidance.  Jesus goes to the desert right off the bat in Lent to show me how to fight.

St. Mark is a straight shooter.  His Gospel isn't decorated.  In a few short lines, Jesus goes from his baptism, to the desert, then back to Galilee to get to work.  Things happen fast.

So too for me there is no time to waste.  Lent is a sacred time that I waste to my own detriment.  It is in the desert, the place of silence, prayer and fasting, where the most important victories of my life must be won.  Why is this?  It's because placed in the garden, I like Adam when I have every reason to say yes to God and no to temptation, I mess up.  So it has to be from the place where Adam is exiled, from that place where I have every reason to say yes to temptation and no to God, that I must reverse the curse.

Jesus didn't need to be baptized or tempted.  Yet he takes on our nature, and does both, not merely in our place but to go there with us and to show us the way.  Baptism gives us a chance, a real chance, to win the ultimate struggle for life and death. Yet fight we must, as Jesus' temptation after his baptism teaches so clearly.

What do I need to face?  If I waste Lent with pretense and avoidance, this vertical dimension of reality, the kingdom of heaven, will remain in a galaxy far, far away.  Yet if I repent, the kingdom of heaven is right here.

What do I need to face?  For me personally, I need a new heart, with which to love God's people.  I can't fix the one I have, and I'm not meant to.  I need to face the temptation to hold onto the heart I have, instead of daring to receive a new heart.

There's something everyone in this church needs to face.  The Gospel could not be more clear.

Be as honest as you can be.

What do I need to face?

where do I see honesty?

Homily

Ash Wednesday

17 February 2021

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +JMJ +m

Free dirt.  Free insults.

It's the best marketing strategy the Catholic Church has ever come up with.  Give free dirt, and free insults, and watch people line up.  Nothing else works quite like it.

We've tried other strategies.  Free food, and even free beer, attract a few of you.  Yet you seem to still prefer Mass St for these things instead of coming to Mass.  We're good at selling guilt.  Yet you don't need a Church for that.  Most of us are quite capable of feeling badly about ourselves on our own.

So what gives?  Why does free dirt and free insults work better than anything else?  I can't answer for you, only for me.  It's on this day, Ash Wednesday, that I see what I most want to see from my church.  On this day I see honesty, and the more brutal it is the better.

The brutal truth is that I pretend to be better than I am.  You do too.  It's something we all have in common, and something Jesus calls out especially today.  I want to live my life from the deepest questions.  Why do I exist?  Does my life matter?  Does my story have a happy ending?  Yet I always end up finding a way to avoid these questions.

But not today.  Today I let a stranger throw dirt on me and tell me I'm gonna die.  It's a huge does of reality.  It's brutal honesty.  It's what I most need.

Jesus invites his disciples to live only one kind of life.  It's a life of honesty, simplicity, vulnerability and humility.  He says this is the only way, and the easiest way.  When I look at His cross, I wonder what He is smoking.  Yet in the cross is truth.  The truth stings, but it is easier than keeping up the sham of pretending to be better than I am.

364 days a year I'm afraid to live as He asks.  But not today.  Today I let a stranger throw dirt on me and call me a fake.  I do this so I can embrace both the gift and the responsibility of my life.  Today I say publicly, in front of all of you, that I know I get one shot to write a great story with my life.  I say that my time is now, and that I'm still in the game.

I'm glad you're here.  I want to build a Church that is tired of pretending, one that is done with the labels, price tags and timers we stick on each other.  The Church I want to belong to isn't afraid to get honest, and to have conversations that bring real and lasting change.

Help me make St. Lawrence this kind of Church, unafraid to live the way Jesus invites us to.

This day is different.  Our time is now.  Let's begin again to make all things new.

when did God last change you?

Homily

6th Sunday in Ordinary Time BI

St. Lawrence Catholic Center at the University of Kansas

14 February 2021

AMDG +JMJ +m

This week, five fraternities were banned from campus for partying during a pandemic, and putting the community at risk.  They broke the rules, and received consequences.  Many of these men are members of the St. Lawrence Center.

I'm not going to judge these men or KU's response.  I do want to note, however, that the more things change, the more things stay the same.

This time, it's not leprosy.  It's COVID-19.  Yet the leprosy of Gospel times and our current pandemic bear so many resemblances.  You think modern medicine has eliminated the need for quarantines, distancing to limit exposure, and rules to keep the community safe?  Hardly!  The same rules in place for leprosy 2000 years ago are all in play today.

Like the fraternity party, in today's Gospel rules are broken!  The leper wants to go to church.  He can't live without being part of a worshipping community.  For him, life means right relationship with God and his community, expressed in public worship.  Good for him!  I wish we all saw such meaning in going to Church.  I get asked all the time if people will come back to Mass after the pandemic.  I honestly don't know.  I know there is no going back, only going forward.  I also know if we're afraid of losing people, in many ways we have already lost them.

That's not the case with this leper.  Banned from the Jerusalem temple, not be a county health order but by the religious authorities in charge of keeping worship safe, the leper breaks quarantine and instead goes right up  and kneels before the new meeting place between God and man, the new temple which is Jesus himself.  

Jesus makes it worse.  Instead of enforcing the rule that this man should declare himself unclean from a distance, Jesus touches him.  Imagine doing this during COVID-19.  Bypassing all rules, all PPE, and just touching someone deliberately.  Jesus in so doing shows that He has come to take our infirmities to Himself.  He makes Himself unclean so that the leper might receive healing, cleansing and saving grace.

The leper then breaks Jesus' rule to shut up about it.  The result is that while he is restored to right relationship, Jesus gets kicked off campus.  He can't go in town, or near the temple, but has to go to the desert to create some space.

When is the last time God touched you in such a way you couldn't shut up about it?  Did it happen in confession?  The sacrament is the spiritual parallel of the Gospel story we just heard.  After declaring ourselves unclean, and unable to contribute to the unity of the worshipping community, a priest speaks for Jesus in telling us He wills to make us clean, and restore us to full communion with God and each other.

If not confession, when did God last touch you?  I am touched right now by the men in RCIA who like the leper in today's Gospel have decided they can't live without being a full member of the Catholic communion and laying hold of salvation by touching Jesus in the sacraments.  When everyone expects this generation of college students to all be lost and cut off forever, these men have gone the opposite direction, and proclaim that to live means to go to church, and to be physically in communion with Jesus.

That's my God moment, that I want to share with the whole world.  What's yours?

what am I made for?

Homily

5th Sunday of Ordinary Time BI

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

7 February 2021

AMDG +JMJ +m

What am I made for?

If you look at everyone's schedules today, it looks like we are all made to watch the Super Bowl!  I hope I get special graces for not canceling Mass.

What am I made for?  I'm still not sure.  My life's motto is to compete in what matters to God.  I like it, but I'm not done discerning yet.  It's not my final final.  I want a unique why as good as John Paul II's.  I am made to be totus tuus Maria.

Do you know what you are made for?  It's a great question for the whole of life.  

Today's Scriptures give us options.  Job at this point of his journey asks whether he was made simply to suffer and to die.  Paul says he was made to preach the Gospel.  He wants to become a slave to all to save at least some.  Paul senses a duty, a responsibility that comes with his freedom.  He aims to play his part in Jesus' mission of redemption.

Jesus on his first day of public ministry shows what He is made for.  He preaches, He casts out evil, and He prays.  It's a pretty good plan!  Can you think of a better way to live?

What if I got up everyday and tried to announce the Gospel?  The good news is that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.  The way things are now are not how they will always be.  Evil, suffering, death, doubt, despair and division do not have the final say.  They have been defeated by Jesus, who now invites me to apply his victory in the context of my life.  Every day I am invited to do what I can to defeat evil, moral and natural, and in so doing I lay hold of the gift of salvation for others and myself.  

Then Jesus prays.  He receives over and over again His mission in conversation with His Father.

That's it, disciples of Jesus!  It's a great recipe.  What am I made for?  What if I am made to proclaim the Gospel, to defeat evil and to pray?  What if I kept it that simple?

What am I made for?